INTRO
What would the reaction of media and society be if athletes like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Rafael Nadal, Yelena Isinbayeva, etc … could not exercise their legitimate right to participate in the upcoming Olympic Games to be held in London next Summer 2012? … This sad fact will unfortunately happen at the London 2012 Paralympic Games and it is my personal duty, as an affected athlete and lover of my sport, to let society know all of this and to make them learn how to judge the perpetrators of this atrocity…
INVOLUTION: Setback in the progress or evolution of a process.
"... And suddenly he opened his eyes and saw that all what he knew was devastated ..."
This metaphor illustrates the feelings of a person who has dedicated his life to adapted sports, after what happened in the last Paralympic Athletics World Championships. The city of Christchurch (New Zealand) held these Championships , and we would like to wish them a fast recovery from the very serious earthquake it suffered last February.
[caption id="attachment185" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="In the woman wheelchair marathon event with just six entries and finally six participants (two refused to race with the course open to traffic) the situation cannot get any worse. In any event of this magnitude the field shouldn´t be never smaller that twenty wheelers."]
This article reveals, with objective and public data, the incomprehensible irrationality with which IPC Athletics * set the classification standards for participation in the Paralympic Athletics World Championships. We don´t know if this way of acting is due to ignorance or to some obscure purpose. That is something whose leaders will have to unveil. What is true is that instead of promoting a sustainable growth of the sport, it tackles the disappearance of many events and categories. We would like to ask these leaders Who are them to deny the legitimate right of any human being to participate in the World Championships , Paralympic Games, or any other macro event of this nature?. Understanding this fact as totally similar to what happened in the early twentieth century when color athletes were refused to take part at sports events.
*Gobern body which totally depends on the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and which is in charge of the managements of Paralympic Athletics and facilitate it development.
[caption id="attachment187" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The class T51 (Stefan Stroble in the picture) whose wheelchair athletes are the most severe athletes of all classes and they won´t have the right to participate in the London marathon, in fact man only have one event in the program and woman won´t even have one. This class is a real inspiration for our society, because although these racers are not able to get on their racing chairs by themselves, are able to race with high perfomances in marathons."]
I’m not an expert in administration and business management, but it is clear that companies are successful when they follow the rule of growing in a balanced way, trying to keep a steady pace and avoiding ups and downs. I have seen this fact first hand in the company for which my wife works, which has grown from approximately 15,000 workers in the nineties to 54,000 today.
Can we see the same evolutionary process in wheelchair athletics? (I’ll focus on my sport, although this analysis is extensible to athletics for people with intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, visual impairment, etc …)
Do we follow any planning done by “IPC Athletics" which reflects an estimated growth for next Olympic year or the 2012-2016 cycle?…. Please do not answer this question in a rush, we will make a short analysis of the situation, providing totally objective numerical data. Wait after that to make your own conclusions…
[caption id="attachment_195" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Follow us in Twitter @IPCATHNOTHANKS"]
Santiago Sanz
Professional wheelchair racer
Degree in Sport Sciences and Physical Activity by University of Valencia
Researcher in Physiology parameters in exercise under extreme and moderate hypoxia
